Читать книгу The Styx - Patricia Holland - Страница 11

He said my mother was a drunk, addicted to amphetamines, and suffering from bipolar II. He said she had gone back to her community to drink herself to death in peace. He said she had forgotten me, and was most probably already dead. He said she preferred men to me; that she changed them like she was the official Aboriginal taste tester. He was pretty sozzled at the time, but the venom he spat was sober hatred.

His rejection of my mother seeped into a rejection of me too. My soul withered. Life held no laughter for me. It was lonely and stark. There wasn’t even a routine to take energy from. I existed, waiting for someone to notice I stank. Waiting for someone to notice I was hungry, thirsty, hot, cold, mosquito bitten, wasp stung.

We live on a cattle station, Styx River Cattle Station, fronting a heap of beaches and beside the Great Basalt Wall. The Styx River runs around behind our homestead and, from my favourite verandah, I can watch it roll in and out every day, twice usually. It is never apologetic in its appearance.

The name of our cattle property meant something once, said some­thing to everyone around here. Now I suppose it still does say something—whatever the tourist brochures tell it to. In my mind, I usually just call it The Styx.

It’s pretty quiet out here a lot of the time; and since my mother left, there’s not a lot of joy. But there is always plenty of laughter to be heard around the place when outsiders are involved. “Going outback,” they say—must be some conceptualistic coastal outback, hey. For a taste of life on a cattle station, they think—well, they mostly all definitely make it to the cattle yards. My father sheds limitless laughter in greeting tourists. You’d probably like him. Most people do. Most people appreciate the social ease he generously, freely, gives. I often recognise the relief people feel at social gatherings, in the easy and safe social harbour he offers. He is often kind, thoughtful, to them. A few short moments of time can add a great deal to a person’s perception. Hail fellow well met, that’s my father. Back then in the early days, they lapped it all up and he glowed in their light. When guests—paying guests—came to stay on the property, some evenings he would introduce the bar hangers-on to revolting parlour games, such as swinging potatoes in a stocking, simulating baggy balls, playing verandah bowls.

I’m just picking one random night now, in about 1993 when I was sixish, sevenish. The moon shone an almond sliver onto my face. They had forgotten to close the curtains again and the window was open in case a breeze shuffled in. My nappy was pretty much at capacity, but it was on the way to summer, so if anything, the wetness offered relief from the remains of the day’s heat. My cot bed had embedded scum on the getting-out side—some remains of vomit, no longer smelling too much, stains of chloral hydrate, and saliva, lots of saliva.

This night the rail was up and the putting-Sophie-to-bed job had been done. It was silent in my bedroom if I didn’t rattle the rail, and I could hear shrieks of laughter—some casually raucous, others salacious—from the bar, twenty metres from my bedroom window.

“Okay, June, show us what you can do with your balls,” I heard my father say. Shrieks of laughter drowned him out for a while.

“I love a woman with balls,” another wit joined in.

“Come on, Sid, your turn, grow another set,” June called out.

I think there are sound grooves in the bar walls of this exchange. Every time, with each new group of tourists, he acts like it’s the first time for such fun. Almost equally as ridiculous, every time, with every new group of them, they seem to actually believe that it is funny. From every tourist bus—easily one every week—he has them ball-bowling in the bar well into the night while I lie alone, scared: scared of being alone, scared of not.

In so many other ways these early years were silent ones, for me. Not that I couldn’t hear, just that I had no voice. My disability gave me a part-time brain, with no-way communication. I couldn’t meaningfully speak. I could shriek and scream with frustration, pain and fear, but had no ability to form coherent words. I looked basically normal, albeit very thin and frail, but I could not toilet myself or feed myself, couldn’t even effectively scratch myself. I had little ability to walk. Sometimes I could totter a few steps, then randomly fall one way or another. I couldn’t use my hands in any purposeful way. I could flail my arms wildly around, grab and never let go, but could not hold a cup. Or even a hand.